


Mortality Salience

by Alexa_Piper



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Christmas Truce 2020, Danny and Val are platonic, Enjoy reading but stay safe!, Gen, I chose not to use archive warnings because the whole mortality-based horror can be sensitive, Identity Reveal, injuries are described but not super graphically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper
Summary: "The beam sat smugly across his thighs and pressed into his pelvis with a weight that felt like a thousand tonnes. Pain throbbed through him, cutting breaths short and making every movement agony."ORDanny and Valerie get stuck together. A Christmas Truce gift for ceciliaspen.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Valerie Gray
Comments: 12
Kudos: 220





	Mortality Salience

“So.” Danny tried to smile despite the screaming pain that overwhelmed his entire lower body. His tongue was sharp with the taste of blood, and he hoped the sudden renewed bleeding of a split lip didn’t ruin the attempt at a friendly expression. “Come here often?”

Valerie glared and curled her legs closer to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Shut up,” she snapped, and the familiarity of the insult would have been almost comforting if not for the fact that her typical vitriol was absent. Without it, she sounded hollow, and far more vulnerable than he ever could have imagined.

“Hey.” His lip stung, and Danny tried to think of something comforting as he wiped away the blood and ectoplasm that trickled down his chin. It streaked the back of his glove in a grisly smear of red and green. “I know this seems hopeless, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

She huddled tighter in on herself, but otherwise didn’t even acknowledge that he’d spoken. He sighed, catching how her glare faltered as he dabbed at his mouth again.

Water dripped through the broken gaps in the ceiling, landing on Valerie’s arm. A tremor visibly ran across her shoulders.

“Oh.” Danny pawed at the zipper in the hollow of his throat. Her dark green eyes followed as he drew it down as low as he could before shimmying his shoulders out of the waterproof fabric.

“What  _ are  _ you doing?” she asked.

Danny pressed against the wooden beam that pinned his lower half to the ground despite the resulting spike in his pain, peeling the HAZMAT as low as it would go. “Suit’s waterproof,” he grunted. “I won’t get hypothermia, but you might.” It wouldn’t go past his waist, thwarted by the beam that sat smugly across his thighs and pressed into his pelvis with a weight that felt like a thousand tonnes. Pain throbbed through him, cutting breaths short and making every movement agony.

He threw out a freshly bare hand, ignoring the way her gaze lingered on the tendrilling feathers of the death scar that wrapped around his arms before disappearing beneath the colour-inverted NASA shirt that had been beneath his suit. “Knife,” he said in response to her questioning look.

When she made no movement he huffed and rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why?”

“So I can cut my suit for you.” Danny wriggled the fingers of his outstretched hand. “Cold. Hypothermia. I’d rather not have another ghost to deal with if you die, y’know?”

“Not that.” More water dripped onto her hair, and she shivered again and tried to move out of the way without closing the gap between them in the confined space. “Why won’t you hurt me?”

He groaned, curling his fingers in a gesture for her to hurry up and pass it over. “I’ve never hurt you, and do you really think I fight those ghosts at three in the morning for  _ fun?” _

Valerie’s frown grew deeper, and the faint lines in her forehead folded into creases. “You’re a ghost too. It doesn’t need to make sense.”

He flapped his hand. “Semantics. Just pass the knife, my arm’s getting tired.”

“Your arm can’t get tired.” She still didn't move. “You don’t have lactic acid, or even muscles.”

“Like I said,  _ semantics.” _ He flapped his hand again and tried not to whine. “Come  _ on.” _

Valerie chewed her lip before scooting closer and swatting his hand out of the way. “Like I’m going to give you one,” she snapped, leaning across him and producing a pocket knife from her pocket. Danny leaned back against the broken ceiling that had collapsed around them, ignoring the screaming pain that lanced through his gut and hips, and positioning himself so that nothing dug too painfully into his back.

Valerie’s long curls hung in the space between them, brushing against his mouth. He raised a hand to push them out of the way.

She jerked back at the movement, knife up and immediately pointing at his throat. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

He froze, hand still halfway to his chin. “Your hair was in my face. I was just going to move it.” He made a show of wiping the back of his hand across his sluggishly bleeding mouth, holding it up so she could see how it was smeared with blood and ectoplasm. “Didn’t think you wanted this on you.”

More water dripped through the ruined ceiling, landing on Danny’s nose. He sneezed, then moaned as pain flared through him. Once it died down he rubbed his knuckles where the raindrop had hit, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t miss the horror that crept into her expression, slackening her jaw and smoothing away the crinkles in her brow as her eyes grew impossibly wide. “You… you’re  _ breathing,” _ she choked, “and… is that…?”

Her free hand grabbed his wrist, fingers like pincers against his skin. Danny winced as she twisted so that the back of his hand faced her again.

“Blood.” She stared for a moment longer, then dropped his wrist and jammed her fingers in the hollow where his ear met his jawline.

“Wait,” he gasped, trying to pull away, but she shoved the knife back into her pocket and used her other hand to hold his shoulders down, leaning heavily across his chest. Danny cried out, pushing weakly against her weight as fire licked through his lower half and wrapped around his torso. “V- _ Ahhh, stop!” _

She drew back at his scream, fingers still pressed beneath his jaw as her eyes followed the movement of his heaving chest.

“What the hell?!” Danny gasped once the pain retreated back to his trapped lower half, lying in wait until the next opportunity to overwhelm him. “I’m pretty sure my pelvis is broken, y’know? I’m trying to save your life and you don’t think I’m hurt enough?”

Her fingernails dug deeper into his throat, and Danny whined and batted her away. She allowed him to, and they both sat in the gloom, their harsh breaths out of sync so that the empty spaces between hers were filled with the pained rasps of his.

“You’re alive.”

He couldn’t look at her anymore. Dread curled painfully beneath his lungs, or maybe it was just the pooling toxins finally leaking from his crushed flesh. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back until it leaned against the uneven rubble. “Yeah,” he whispered, and the confession bore the exhausting, undefeatable weight of a millstone around his neck. “For now.”

He listened to the rain in between their breaths. Several drops fell onto his bare face and arms before she moved with a rustle of cloth, and then a hand, far warmer than his skin but colder than it should be, gently closed over his shoulder. “What do you mean, for now? How can you be alive when you’re a ghost?”

Danny shrugged at her soft question and regretted it instantly as the movement tugged at lower muscles that rippled with white-hot pain. He winced, curling his hands into fists and taking a couple of grounding breaths before trusting his voice. “If I say semantics enough times will you drop it?”

Her grip tightened, her gentle tone disappeared under familiar sharpness. “Phantom. Tell me right now. What. Do. You. Mean?”

Danny laughed humorlessly, and it quickly dissolved into a whimper.

“I’ll shake you,” she threatened, and the grip on his shoulder became painful.

Danny cracked open an eye to give her his best unimpressed frown. “I’m dying, Val. Have some respect.”

The light was rapidly fading, sinking into twilight, and Danny could barely make out her expression. The only source of illumination was the glow of his own body, but it didn’t do much beyond making his own condition unflinchingly apparent. Her mouth worked, opening and closing as though she was trying to figure out what to say, and Danny pounced on the opportunity to derail the conversation. “Jumpsuit,” he reminded her, gesturing to his clothing with the smallest movement possible. “It’s no good both of us dying here.”

She took a sharp breath and drew back, shaking her head. “No, you… you’re so cold. You need it.”

Danny huffed, but it came out more as a pained whine. “I have an ice core. Hypothermia isn’t an issue for me.”

She leaned closer again, and her eyes shone green as they reflected his own spectral glow back at him. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

He pursed his lips. “Come on, Val. You’ve  _ seen _ me shoot ice out my hands. I can’t do that without an ice core.”

She regarded him for a few more breaths before something in his expression seemed to convince her, and then Valerie shifted to crouch right beside him. She tugged at his suit, far more gently than he’d anticipated, and Danny lay back and let her work.

It wasn’t long before she made an apologetic sound. “I need to reach around your back.”

He sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. His ribs were beginning to ache. “Alright. Just… give me a second.”

She obligingly leaned away, and Danny pressed his elbows into the hard, jagged chunks of what felt like roof tiles. He took another deep breath, screwed his eyes shut, and  _ pushed. _

The broken fragments of his pelvis ground together. He thought he might have screamed, but then her arm looped around his back and held him upright. Danny sagged against the support, gasping as tears blurred his vision and poured down his face, and pain pierced him with a million burning knives.

She tugged at his suit and Danny sobbed, his head lolling forward so that glowing tears dripped onto his shirt. “Hurry,” he begged, and the jerky one-armed sawing of the knife at his lower back melded with the pulsing anguish below his waist. It spread up, through his gut and chest, and engulfed him with burning and darkness.

The next time he registered any sensation, Danny’s ears resonated with ringing. He blinked, and sucked in a shaky breath.

“You back?”

Something sharp pressed into his scalp, and he shifted his pounding head. Right. Rubble. Soft fingers slipped beneath his skull, smoothing out the rough surface, and Danny tried to make an appreciative noise.

All that made it past his lips was a faint whine, and he heard her sigh as those same fingers brushed his overlong fringe away from where rainwater made it stick across his eyes. “Phantom?”

He blinked again, blearily, and her face finally came into focus. The shadows beneath her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks were thrown into stark contrast by his ghostly glow, and he was startled by the realisation that she’d lost the round softness that had once been there. She probably didn’t mind the change, but he felt suddenly sad, as though something precious was gone.

“Sorry,” he rasped.

Her other hand rested on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths. “You scared me.”

He frowned. The water on her face caught his spectral light, but he had no way to know if it was tears or rain. “Never thought I’d… hear you say that,” he wheezed. Talking hurt, and the pain in his hips had crept higher, raking sharp fingers through his gut and clenching around his ribs. “Maybe sitting up… was a bad idea.”

The hand still on his forehead pressed heavier for a moment, and then she pulled back. With the staticy rustle of waterproof HAZMAT, she slid her arms into the sleeves of the top half of his jumpsuit. The zipper was still attached to half of its teeth, and after a few attempts, she managed to re-thread the other side and pull it up to her chin.

Danny used the moment to settle. He tried to relax as much of his body as he could, focusing on each muscle that wasn’t currently being crushed and forcing it to unclench. The effort was rewarded with a marked decrease in the pain that pressed against his ribs, but every breath still throbbed as his lower muscles protested any movement.

He looked over at Valerie, catching her staring at his face, and she quickly looked away.

He didn’t know why he asked his next question, except to fill the silence. “Why did I scare you?”

Any remnants of daylight were gone by now, but he could still make out her scowl in the unnatural light cast by his body. Instead of answering, Valerie scooted back so that she was sitting against the ruined wall. Their tiny clearing in the ruined building was no bigger than the interior of a car, but her new position moved her out of the way of the majority of the rainwater that dripped through the small gaps in the ruined ceiling. He thought she wasn’t going to answer him by the time she finally spoke. “What are you?”

The question wasn’t that surprising, but laughter clenched Danny’s lungs and forced its way out as yet another pained wheeze. “Who knows?” he choked, blinking past fresh tears that were brought on by the stabbing pain. “Damn it, Val… If I knew, then maybe… maybe we wouldn’t be here right now.” He sucked in a few more ragged breaths. “I mean, if I knew, like… ah, ouch… like  _ really  _ knew, then maybe I’d have told  _ you… _ and… you wouldn’t have… have shot me into the ceiling.”

“Don’t blame this on me,” she snapped, and he held up a hand.

“I’m not… blaming you. Just… thought we might have been friends.”

“I don’t make friends with ghosts,” she snapped, and pulled his ruined suit tighter around herself.

Danny dropped his hand back to his side. He’d caught his breath a bit, but talking still hurt more now than it had before. “Y’know, Val… I think you might have… If I’d told you I was half human before… the whole thing with the ghost dog... which I  _ swear _ was an accident.”

Water dripped in the darkness, and wind tugged at the trees somewhere beyond their cocoon of broken wood and plaster.

“You’re part human,” she whispered, the soft words almost lost in the weather.

Danny gave a slow blink with a gentle tilt of his head in an affirmative gesture. “Lab accident,” he clarified, struggling to speak above a wheeze himself. “I was full human before, so technically I’m half ghost. The jargon is that I’m a halfa.”

“Whose jargon?” she asked, and Danny thought he might have sensed a genuinely curious undertone. “It sounds stupid.”

“The other ghosts.” He shifted the hand on the side visible to her in a general so-so gesture instead of trying to shrug. “Most of them don’t really like me.”

She snorted. “What, because you fight them?”

“Nah.” He worked the words around his mouth slowly, trying not to seem like he was out of breath from their conversation. “The living dead thing kinda… kinda ruins it for them. I fight them... because they like trying world dominion.”

“Right.”

He watched as she looked down at her hands, fiddling with the jagged shreds where her new clothing abruptly cut off above her hips.

“Is that what the scar’s from?” she finally asked, and he thought her gaze might have fixed on the glowing Lichtenberg tendrils.

Danny let out a long, shaky breath. “It’s rude to ask.” He said it as gently as he could, trying to push down a pain that wasn’t entirely physical. The fine hairs on his skin fizzed for a moment, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as they burned out with the tiny sizzle of electrical sparks that quickly died in the night. His scars shone brighter too at the topic, and he heaved his thoughts away before he could properly revisit the trauma. “Don’t… don’t ask. Please.”

The plastic rustle of his suit told him that she was moving again, and Danny turned his head a bit more to see her better as she repositioned herself. Trees creaked in the storm, their tossing leaves providing a backdrop of static. Finally, she spoke. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, exhaustion and throbbing anguish weighing down the words.

“To us,” she said. “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”

Danny sighed, regretting the movement as his ribs twinged. “While I’m still baffled… why you chased me without your suit… that gun won’t stop my powers forever… So no, you won’t die here… I’ll phase us out, soon as… as my core’s back online.”

A sniffle broke past the storm’s noise. “You’re hurt though. And… if you’re still alive… you said it yourself, before. That you’re dying.”

“I know.” Danny squeezed his eyes shut. They burned with exhaustion. “It’s… a race against time, I guess… My core heals me really fast… so if it comes back in time… I should be okay.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Danny didn’t answer what should have been an obvious question. Before, when he’d first been pinned and the abandoned building had collapsed around them, he’d thought it would all be fine. She’d screamed and cried as she fruitlessly clawed at the rubble, but he’d laid back to wait, thinking that it was just another Thursday.

Now, though? Now a cold emptiness that had nothing to do with cryokinesis leaked into his marrow.

If his core didn’t kick back in soon, this might actually be it.

Valerie finally whispered over the wind again. “If… if it comes to that, who should I tell?”

“What?” He opened his eyes again, trying to make out more than her outline. Her question filled him with dread.

She cleared her throat, and asked again, louder this time. “You said that you were… are… human. So if you do die here, who should I tell?”

He closed his eyes, tears slipping free. “Jazz.” His voice cracked, and he swallowed dryly and licked his lips before trying again. “Jazz Fenton. She’ll tell… Um, she’ll make sure that the right… the right people know.” The faltering words weren’t blocked by his pain, but by a tightening throat as he tried not to picture his loved ones learning that he was never coming home.

“Jazz Fenton?” He tone was just shy of disbelieving. “Really?”

“Just do it please,” he choked, and more tears trailed down his temples. One dripped into his ear while the other disappeared into his hair.

The ruins rattled as wind slammed into the building, and something shifted in their tiny cavern.

Valerie swore. “How didn’t I realise?” she choked, and it sounded like she tried to muffle a sob with her hands. “You… you look just… just  _ like _ him.”

Danny sniffed, making his chest throb. He blinked a few times before looking at her shadowy form. The reflective collar of his jumpsuit directed his glow back at him, and he gave what felt like a truly pathetic smile. “Hi, Val.”

“Danny?” she whispered, his name tight with her tears.

“Yeah.”

She swore again, and pitched forward onto her hands and knees, crawling across the gap between them. Her hand wrapped around his, and he squeezed with what little strength he could give.

“What have I done?” Her proximity shed more of his glow onto her face, and tears caught the light as they dripped off her chin.

“It’s okay,” he breathed. The chill in his bones was spreading now, numbing whatever it touched. The tempering of his pain would have been a relief if it didn’t clench the cold hand of fear around his heart.

She lifted his hand to her cheek, and her skin was almost unbearably hot. “I’m sorry,” she wailed, and her tears flowed over his fingers. “I’m sorry, Danny, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He closed his eyes again, trying to keep breathing as she chanted the apology over and over. The ice creaking through his veins drowned out all other senses, and Danny gasped as his chest seized in a sudden cramp.

Light flashed through his closed eyelids, and in an instant, power burst from his core. The weight of his human form settled over him like a shroud and Danny instinctively  _ dissolved, _ opening his eyes in time to see the beam slip through his intangible lower half.

“Pull me out,” he gasped.

“What?!”

The familiar white rings were blinding after so long in the darkness. “Just pull!” he shouted, and then her hands found his shoulders and  _ hauled, _ and Danny screamed as all of the pain from before came crashing back and the shattered bones in his hips and thighs ground together and stabbed sharp ends into what had to be every single nerve ending he had.

The lights disappeared, and his pulse beat through his ears before sinking into ringing silence.

His next thought was that something irregular and hard was digging into the space between his shoulder blades, and that he ached all over. Light brushed against his eyelids, not bright enough to be direct sunlight but still definitely natural, judging from the fresh air that filled his lungs. Danny swallowed, his mouth thick and fuzzy, and rolled onto his side with a groan.

Everything beneath his waist throbbed with the motion and he whined, curling an arm around his gut.

“Hey.”

It took a moment to place the casual greeting, and when foggy thoughts finally pushed past the pain in his hips and legs, Danny’s eyes shot open. “Val?” he croaked, squinting in the light.

“Thought you wouldn’t make it for a hot minute.” She carded her fingers through his hair.

“Great.” His tongue stuck in his mouth, and he swallowed again and let his eyes fall shut. “Got any water?”

“Not unless you drink the mud,” she said, and then pressed her hand against his shoulder. “Your shirt’s still damp, though. You could probably suck some water from that.”

In any other circumstance it would have been humiliating, but after the night he’d just had Danny figured that pride wasn’t really an issue here. He blindly groped for the hem of his shirt and pulled it up to his mouth, sucking the slightest amount of heavenly moisture from the fabric.

It wasn’t much, but still managed to clear away the majority of the stickiness.

He tugged his shirt back down before opening his eyes to look at her again. “What happened?”

She snorted. Beams of sunlight broke through the cracked ceiling, illuminating her flyaway curls from behind. “What do you think? Your core started working, I guess. It turned you into the human you, anyway. You went intangible or something. I pulled you out. You passed out, which is no surprise since you really should have died.” She gave a choked laugh that held an edge of hysteria. “I then sat next to you all night counting your breaths and heartbeats, and once the wind died down I listened to your bones grinding back into place.”

He sighed, and the pressure of such a deep inhalation nudged against healing flesh with the dull ache of a fresh bruise. “Thanks for pulling me out.”

She shrugged, and he realised that she no longer wore his jumpsuit. “It’s the least I could do.”

“I guess I  _ am  _ your ticket out of here,” he joked. “Have you heard any rescuers yet?”

“With the storm we had last night?” she scoffed. “I doubt their priority is an old collapsed building that they think is abandoned.”

She lapsed into silence, and Danny found himself picturing her sitting there, alone with his corpse still pinned down by the beam. He pushed the thought away. “My core’s still a bit fuzzy,” he confessed, “probably from the massive healing job. Give me a little longer before I try phasing us out. You wouldn’t want to get stuck halfway through a wall. Trust me, I’d know.”

She hummed. Wind wormed its way through the shattered structure, stirring the air with life. Danny laid his head back and listened as windswept leaves whispered in the spaces between soft bird calls somewhere beyond the walls.

“I don’t suppose you’ll keep my secret?” he finally asked.

She sighed, and hope leapt in his chest as she tapped a finger against her chin with an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression. “Well, it’s not like I didn’t just have an entire night to rethink everything I know about you.”

“And?” he pressed when she didn’t elaborate.

Her mouth curved, and he realised that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d witnessed her smile without malice. “I figured that I could use a bit of backup sometimes, y’know.” She held out a hand. “What do you say, Spooky? Partners?”

He took her hand and shook it with as much strength as he could. “Welcome to Team Phantom, Red.”

She broke their grip with a guffaw, her smile breaking into an outright grin. “Seriously? Team Phantom?”

He laughed too, even though it hurt, but then her words from a moment ago finally registered and the laughter died as quickly as it had come. “Wait a minute, did you just nickname me  _ Spooky?” _

She cackled, and as her eyes gleamed wickedly he almost wished he’d died after all. “Well, I guess I could always just call you  _ Inviso-Bill!” _


End file.
